John Wesley, electrical quack? the book

Desideratum
(Wellcome Library)

In 1760, John anonymously wrote and published a 72 page book called The Desideratum: Or, Electricity made plain and useful. By a Lover of Mankind, and of Common Sense (Schwab, 178).  (Desideratum means "desired thing" in Latin.)  It was almost entirely abridged from other writers, especially from Richard Lovett's The Subtil Medium Prov'd (Maddox, Holistic, 25), which was the first English work on electrotherapy (Schwab, 177).

John didn't really care how electrical treatment worked.  "We know it is a thousand medicines in one: In particular, that it is the most efficacious medicine, in nervous disorders of every kind, which has ever yet been discovered.  But if we aim at theory, we know nothing.  We are soon Lost and bewilder'd in the fruitless search." (Wesley, Journal, 4 January 1768, vol. 5, 247 in Schwab, 198.)  He knew it worked because nearly half of the case studies detailed in The Desideratum were about his own patients or himself (Schwab, 188).  Before The Desideratum, John had experimented on himself, shocking himself for nerve pain and lameness (Maloney, H. Newton. "John Wesley and the Eighteenth Century Therapeutic Uses of Electricity," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 47:4 (December 1995), 244,  http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1995/PSCF12-95Malony.html, accessed 30 November 2012).  To treat more people, John even carried the machine with him on preaching tours around the country (Webster, 217). He recommended it to his brother, Charles, asking him to try it and not ignore it as "a quack medicine." (Wesley, John.  Letter to Charles Wesley 26 December 1761, Letters (Telford), vol. 4, 166 in Schwab, 193).  John wrote in his journal of at least two other times he used electrification on himself, once in 1773 for pain in his side and shoulder caused by inflammation, and once in 1783 for leg cramps, fever, and tightness in the chest (Maloney, np).

1791 edition of Primitive Physic, opened to "Electrifying"
Photo taken at Oxford Centre for Methodism, Oxford, UK
16 October 2012

Oxford Centre for Methodism
Charles "Charlie" Wallace from Willamette University doing research
17 October 2012

In the 1760 edition of Primitive Physick, John included fifty illnesses that could be treated electrically (Webster, 218).

John Wesley, electrical quack?

Electricity first became popular in English society in 1747, when it was all the rage.  There were practitioners who knocked people down with electricity for a sixpence, a scientist who sent an electrical charge through a four-mile circuit, Ben Franklin was writing about it in America, and a Swiss professor cured a patient's paralyzed arm by giving it a series of small electrical shocks (Schwab, 170).  John went to see electricity at work and wrote, "How must these [experiments] also confound those poor half-thinkers, who will believe nothing but what they can comprehend?  Who can comprehend, how fire lives in water, and passes through it more freely than through air?  How flame issues out of my finger, real flame, such as sets fire to spirits of wine?  How these, and many more as strange phenomena, arise from the turning round a glass globe?  It is all mystery ..." (Wesley, Journal, 16 October 1747, vol 3, 320-21 in Schwab, 170-71).

Several persons appear to have thought about using electricity to heal within the same time frame.  Wesley wrote in 1753, "I advised one who had been troubled many years with stubborn paralytic disorder, to try a new remedy.  Accordingly, she was electrified, and found immediate help.  By the same means I have known two persons cured of an inveterate pain in the stomach, and another of a pain in his side, which he had had ever since he was a child.  Nevertheless, who can wonder that many gentlemen of the Faculty [the university trained physicians], as well as their good friends, the apothecaries, decry a medicine so shockingly cheap and easy ...?" (Wesley, Journal, 20 January 1753, vol 4, 51 in Schwab, 176.)

John's electrical machine.
Photo taken at Wesley's home
London, 13 Oct 2012 

Having read extensively about the use of electricity as a medical treatment, in 1756 John got an electrical machine:  "Having procured an apparatus on purpose, I ordered several persons to be electrified, who were ill of various disorders; some of whom found an immediate, some a gradual, cure.  From this time I appointed, first some hours in every week, and afterward an hour in everyday, wherein any that desired it, might try the virtue of this surprising medicine.  Two or three years after, our patients were so numerous that we were obliged to divide them:  So part were electrified in Southwark, part at the Foundry [his headquarters in London], others near St. Paul's, and the rest near the Seven-Dials [part of London]:  The same method we have taken ever since; and to this day, while hundreds, perhaps thousands, have received unspeakable good, I have not known one man, woman, or child, who has received any hurt thereby: So that when I hear any talk of the danger of being electrified, (especially if they are medical men who talk so,) I cannot but impute it to great want either of sense or honesty." (Wesley, Journal, 9 November 1756, vol. 4, 190-91 in Schwab, 177-78.)

Randy Maddox suggests there were three primary reasons for John's passion about electrification: (1) he had observed positive results for himself and others, (2) electricity was part of God's creation and was thus more natural than chemical treatments, and (3) it was easy to access and inexpensive (Maddox, Holistic, 25).  As always, he was concerned about those who were poor and sick (Schwab, 176).

John Wesley, supernaturalist?

First there was John's "enthusiasm," so he was already considered a religious quack.  But there were also accusations that the Methodists promoted the supernatural in their promotion of spiritual healings.  Remember the picture by Hogarth two days ago?  We know it was specifically aimed at the Methodists because under the thermometer on the right (measuring the emotional state of the brain) is a book of "John Westley's [sic] Sermons."  Note the witch and devil hanging off the main preacher's hands.


"Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism"
William Hogarth
(Wellcome Library)

John taught that the best form of Christianity was "primitive" Christianity, with a focus on returning to the basics of the early Christian Church in the first couple of centuries after Christ.  Therefore, since spiritual healings happened with obvious supernatural involvement in those times, they should be accepted in the 18th century (Rack, 151).  John's own family had a knocking ghost in the Epworth rectory named Old Jeffrey, and he believed in it after receiving detailed letters from his family about Old Jeffrey (Old Rectory tour, Epworth, UK; 9 October 2012).  John sent one of his assistants, John Bennet, to visit Bridget Bostock twice.  At first Bennet was favorable towards her but by the second visit he was more noncommittal -- "She is an unaccountable woman.  Time will make manifest [whether her work is of Christ or not.]," he wrote.  John wrote back to Bennet that he "found no reason to doubt" her power or healings (Rack, 141-42).

"Methodists drew a rough line between what was acceptable and unacceptable in the supernatural world.  Witches and demons were real but to be opposed; folk magic on the whole was to be avoided (by the leadership that is, probably not always by the rank and file).  The magical vestiges in folk medicine may not always have been recognized as such.  [John reprinted some folk medicine cures in Primitive Physick.]  Bridget Bostock may have retained some of the marks of the village 'wise woman' but John Bennet would at least suspend judgement on her because she healed by the 'biblical' means of spittle and prayer [as Jesus did]," wrote Henry Rack (Rack, 152.)

"Who can tell, how many of those diseases which we impute altogether to natural causes may really be preternatural [extraordinary]?  What disorder is there in the human frame which an evil angel may not inflict?" wrote John (Works, 14 vols (London, 1842), VI 358; VII 315, quoted in MacDonald, 111).  Therefore, Methodists attempted to heal not only with physick but also with prayer and fasting (MacDonald, 111).  John did not prescribe only prayer or only physick for illness -- his balanced emphasis on both is still seen in Methodism today.

Although John was open to the supernatural in some situations, he also felt there were limits.  One of his lay preachers, George Bell, healed a woman of a breast abscess but in 1762 when Bell began proclaiming he was a prophet, the end of the world was coming, and then attempted to raise the dead, John expelled him from the Methodists (Rack, 149-50).  Although John supported physick, Methodist preachers were not allowed to sell "pills, drops, or balsams" to their listeners (Wesley, John. Minutes of Several Conversations, quoted in Rack, 146), unlike quacks like Joseph Graham.  And although preachers distributed copies of Primitive Physick, John defined their role as healers as strictly secondary to their more crucial roles as pastors and preachers (Rack, 152).

Yesterday and today, we focused on John Wesley, the religious "quack."  Tomorrow and afterwards, we will look at John Wesley, the medical "quack."

John Wesley, enthusiast

The upper class and intellectuals hated "enthusiasm."  In fact, a famous bishop in the Church of England said that claiming to be inspired by the Holy Spirit was "a horrid thing, sir, a very horrid thing."   Another bishop wrote a three volume book on The Enthusiasm of the Methodists and Papists Compared (Edwards, 66).  "Papists" (followers of the pope, Catholics) were suspiciously distrusted due to the religious civil wars in which the Protestant Church of England "won."  Most people thought Methodism and Catholicism had a lot in common, and trusted neither.  And although when John and Charles Wesley preached they did not intend to incite crowds to revivalist phenomena, this is what happened (Edwards, Maldwyn.  Sons to Samuel (London: The Epworth Press, 1961) 65-66).

(Source: http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=my-myy&sz=all&va=john+wesley+preaching)

John and Charles and their friend George Whitefield had discovered there were hundreds of thousands of people who had not been exposed to the Gospel, so they preached wherever they could.  John Calvin's doctrine of "double predestination" was the prevalent theology.  This meant that God calls only some of us to be Christians, God's grace is irresistible and the called can't do anything but be saved.  There are others who are not chosen and there is nothing they can do to be saved  The Wesleys preached that Christ died for everyone and offers universal salvation.  All persons can be redeemed but not quickly and not easily, and we must "work out our own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12) (Watson, David Lowes. "Q and A" lecture, Wesley Pilgrimage, 8 October 2012).  Think how poor illiterate oppressed people would feel when told they have not been automatically condemned but can change their lives through their own effort and God's grace?  Of course they would react intensely!

"While the word of God was preached, some persons have dropped down as dead; some have been, as it were, in strong convulsions; some roared aloud, though not with an articulate voice; and others spoke the anguish of their souls," wrote John (Works, viii, p. 129 ff, quoted in Holland, Bernard. "A Species of Madness: The Effect of John Wesley's Early Preaching." Wesley Historical Society Proceedings (v. 39, October 1973), 79).  By fervently preaching about hell and its agonies, John frightened some people into becoming hysterical.  Bernard Holland postulates that the reason penitent people desperate for God's forgiveness would become so hysterical is that early in his preaching John taught that, "in spite of their longing to be reconciled to God, they were nevertheless still damned until faith was given them.  It was this that so intensified the feeling of helplessness and anxiety of those who were under conviction that some of them fell down as if dead, or cried out, or became delirious" (Holland, 80-81, italics by author.)

Charles felt that often people were doing this for attention, and found it distasteful.  He wrote in his Journal on 4 June 1743 that "outward affections were easy to be imitated" and found that when he ignored a drunk who supposedly was having a religious fit, and moved some loudly crying women out of his sight, both these problems resolved (Edwards, 65-66).

Neither Charles' nor George's preaching inspired the hysteria John's did.  Eventually John agreed with Charles that those longing for faith were accepted by God, since God gave the longing even if one did not immediately have spiritual confirmation of the faith, and therefore changed his message.  Thus, after the anxiety (Holland, 83) and the novelty wore off, the unpleasant excesses of emotionalism receded.  However, the negative impressions of Methodist "enthusiasm" continued for many years (Edwards, 66).

John Wesley, quack?

John Wesley
(The New Room, Bristol, UK)

John Wesley was considered by a lot of people to be a quack, both spiritually and medically (Madden, Cheap, 12).  Religiously, he was perceived as hotheaded and "enthusiastic," which in our time is a compliment but at that time meant "fanatical."  Differences in religion had recently caused a civil war in England.  Thus, the established Church of England clergy were typically men who depended on the intellect and not the emotions, so they distrusted John's "enthusiasm" as he promoted Methodism as a way to revitalize the Church of England (Watson, David Lowes.  "Wesley and Cranmer" lecture, Wesley Pilgrimage by General Board of Discipleship, United Methodist Church, 8 October 2012).  He never had his own church in England, and would travel to different places to preach as a guest preacher.  Based on their support or opposition to his ideas, the clergy in those churches would either allow him to preach or refuse his request.  At one time he climbed on top of his father's tomb to preach because the current rector would not allow him to preach in the church where John had been baptized and John's father had been clergy for almost 40 years!  One of the reasons he preached in the open air (considered scandalous at the time), was because Church of England pulpits were increasingly closed against him.

You have learned about Joseph Graham, the quack who combined his treatments with his theology.  Quacks prospered during this time because so little was known about how the body worked and how to treat illness.  Although waning, the belief in "wise women, wart charmers and faith healers" continued, especially in the provinces (Rack, Henry. "Doctors, Demons and Early Methodist Healing" in Sheils, WJ, ed. The Church and Healing: Studies in Church History, Papers Read at the Twentieth Summer Meeting and the Twentyfirst Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1982) 139).  In comparison to Graham, the Chelsea "doctoress" Bridget Bostock was a healer who used prayer and "fasting spittle" (spit in the mouth when one hasn't eaten in awhile).  She took no money, wore old clothes, and treated persons of all classes, seeing 500-600 patients a day.  It is to her credit that she refused to attempt raise Sir John Price's third wife from the dead, no matter how much money he offered.  He must have really liked his wives, since he embalmed the first two wives and kept their bodies in his bedroom.  The third wife refused to marry him until the bodies were dispatched (Rack, 140-41).

The governing English elite were aghast at the number of new sects with potentially subversive political agendas.  They were appalled and opposed to any religious groups that believed in, or claimed, special powers pf revelation and holiness.  Therefore, polite society molded itself to believe in rational religion and natural philosophy and to reject the intellectual bases of spiritual healing.  They went so far as to discredit "enthusiasm" by presenting it as a form of mental illness (MacDonald, Michael.  "Religion, Social Change, and Psychological Healing in England, 1600-1800"in Sheils, WJ, ed. The Church and Healing: Studies in Church History, Papers Read at the Twentieth Summer Meeting and the Twentyfirst Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1982) 119).  Between 1772 and 1795 the entrance books of Bethlem Hospital ("Bedlam") recorded 90 patients admitted who were considered insane because of "religion and Methodism."  In fact, Wesley and George Whitefield, a fellow Methodist clergy, rescued several men and women from mad-doctors and madhouses. The two felt these people were very pious and not insane (MacDonald, 124). 



(Source: Wellcome Library, London)

This representation of "Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism: A Medley" is by the satirist William Hogarth, published in 1761.  It makes fun of Methodist enthusiasm.  Under "A Medley" Hogarth has added the verse of 1 John 4:1, "Believe not every Spirit, but try the Spirits whether they are of God: because many false Prophets are gone out into the World."

The room is in a chaos of differing intense emotions, as (supposedly) George Whitefield is preaching and in the back John Wesley is pointing up at the "New and Correct Globe of Hell" to a terrified attender.  Mary Tofts is in the bottom left having her rabbit babies, a boy is spitting out nails, the clergyman in the middle with the cherubs is sobbing, and the young lady on the right is in such religious ecstasy that she does not notice the amorous clergyman slipping something down her dress.  For more of an explanation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credulity,_Superstition,_and_Fanaticism.

More on the "enthusiasm" of the Methodists tomorrow.

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James Graham, part 2



"A new way of preserving health and beauty"
Rambler's Magazine, 1 July 1786
(Source: British Museum)

Another of Graham's treatments was earth-bathing. In the drawing above, Graham stands leaning on his cane supervising his earth-bathing establishment. An assistant is ready to shovel dirt, while three naked women are in various stages of being buried and a clothed one observes. The best mud was "fresh, icy, cold earth brought from the top of Hampstead Hill,' but if one was too busy a chunk of turf strapped under the shirt was somewhat helpful. He would lecture while buried naked up to the neck, which was "quite enough to call up the chaste blushes of the modest ladies," according to an observer.  He stayed buried for days, fasting and lecturing almost continually (Porter, Bodies, 204-05).
 

The temple, medicines, use of electricity, and earth-bathing all seem to have been based on his universalist beliefs, which were semi-mystic. Each were to be used in conjunction with a changed moral lifestyle. Graham promoted "regimen, or your general manner of living and conducting yourselves" as being more important than "loads of harsh, nauseous, and unnatural medicines from doctors and apothecaries" (Graham, James. The Guardian of Health, Long-life, and Happiness: or Dr Graham's General Directions as to Regimen, etc. To which are added, the Christian's Universal [sic](Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1790), 1, quoted in Smith, 269). However, he also sold medicines with the caution that patients understand

"It will be unreasonable for Dr Graham's Patients to expect a complete and lasting cure, or even great alleviation of their peculiar maladies, unless they keep their body and limbs most perfectly clean with very frequent washings -- breathe fresh open air day and night, -- be simple in the quality and moderate in the quantity of their food and drink -- and totally give up using the deadly poisons and canker worms of estates, called foreign Tea and Coffee, Red Port Wine, Spiritous Liquors, Tobacco and Snuff, gaming and late hours, and all sinful, unnatural, and excessive indulgence of the animal appetites, and of the diabolical and degrading mental passions. On practising the above rules ... depends the very perfection of bodily health, strength, and happiness." (Graham, James. A Short Treatise on the All-Cleansing, All-Healing, and All-Invigorating Qualities of the Simple Earth (Newcastle, 1780), 18, quoted in Smith, 269-70.)

Graham sold both physical and moral beauty (Smith, 271).  However, he did it with a spiritual message.  Ginnie Smith writes, "Graham's constant references to coolness, cleanliness, and frequent washings with 'cold living water' were ritualistic, puritanical incantations against hot regimen [a type of treatment to balance the humours by making the body warmer] and associated evils.  The Prayer for his Christian Universal Church, which had as its aim 'to unite every affinity that there is between the elements and man ... between man and everything that there is in the universe', called for a life of 'temperance and moderation, in perfect purity, cleanness, and self-denial of body, internal and external'.  Sexual chastity and physical purity together made up a religiously oriented 'pollution theory', through which 'cleanness' would bring the spiritual and physical body materially closer to God[.]" (Smith, 270.)  Kind of hard to reconcile this with his Celestial Bed, isn't it?

This is why he is considered to be such a quack -- he underscored his products with a religious emphasis that was not widely accepted.  He attempted to make money off of his Temple, his mud-bathing houses, his medicinal remedies (while not guaranteeing them unless there was a drastic lifestyle change), and the use of electricity, yet presenting it all as spiritual practices.

There were many people who thought John Wesley was both a medical and religious quack (Madden, Deborah. 'A Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine':  Religion and Culture in John Wesley's Primitive Physic (New York: Rodopi, 2007), 12).  After all, didn't he promote health with a spiritual emphasis?



James Graham, the quack

When is someone labelled a "quack"?  Is it when they don't believe in their own treatments but continue to sell them?  Is it when their treatments don't work?  Is it when the treatments don't stand the test of time?  Or is it a way of discounting something they are promoting that we don't agree with?


left: Dr. James Graham
Rambler's Magazine, 1 March 1783
right: Emma Lyon, age 17
2-3 years after her time at the Temple of Health
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Lyon
(Source: British Museum) 

"Dr." James Graham is our quack of choice, both because of the wide variety of "cures" he offered and because he was known as "the Emperor of Quacks" (Schwab, Linda.  "'This Curious and Important Subject': John Wesley and The Desideratum" in Madden, Inward, 193).
Graham believed in his treatments.  Although he claimed to be a physician and did study medicine in Scotland, he did not graduate (Porter, Bodies, 203).  It was commonly accepted for quacks to call themselves "Dr."

Graham gave lectures and wrote tracts, advertising his theories, his medicines and his Temple (Smith, Ginnie.  "Prescribing the rules of health: Self-help and advice in the late eighteenth century" in Porter, Patients, 268).  He opened his Temple of Health and Hymen in 1780 to promote sexual health.  It included an opulent 9'x12' bed which promised "immediate conception" for infertile couples and "superior ecstasy" for thrill-seekers.  The bed's ambiance was assisted by silk sheets, pivots, magnets, statues, music, "balmy and ethereal spices" and glass pillars. (Olsen, 277, 265).  It was called the "Celestial Bed" and cost 50 pounds a night to use (Porter, Bodies, 204), almost $6,500 today! (http://www.futureboy.us/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=500&currency=pounds&fromYear=1783, accessed 21 November 2012).
He claimed sex made one healthy, for "[t]he genitals are the true pulse, and infallible barometer of health."  His "Lecture on the Generation, Increase and Improvement of the Human Species" about sex was given accompanied by several scantily clothed young women, including Emma Lyon [who later became Emma, Lady Hamilton, the mistress of Lord Nelson].  However, he was an equal opportunity promoter of sexual satisfaction, for he believed women were just as lusty as men (Porter, Bodies, 77).
However, masturbation, according to Graham could lead to "debility of body and of mind, -- infecundity, -- epilepsy, -- loss of memory, -- sight, and hearing, -- distortions of the eyes, mouth and face, -- feeble, harsh and squeaking voice, -- pale, sallow and blueish black complexion, -- wasting and tottering of the limbs, -- idiotism, -- horrors, -- innumerable complaints -- extreme wretchedness -- and even death itself." (Porter, Roy. English Society in the 18th Century. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 286-87, quoted in Olsen, 36-37.)  Graham wanted to sanitize and spiritualize procreative sex, and people came to the Temple in the hundreds (Smith, 270).
Before setting up the Temple, Graham had practised for a period of time in America, where he met Benjamin Franklin and became convinced of the helpfulness of medical electricity.  He included electrical machines, Leyden jars (which store electrical charges) and even an "electrical throne" in his Temple.  Electrical therapy was newly fashionable at the time (Porter, Bodies, 203-04).

More on Graham tomorrow.

 



The Dark Side of John Hunter

"Resurrection men" bagging up
a corpse while the skeleton of
Death taps one on the shoulder
(Wellcome Library)

The general public's abhorrence of dissection frustrated the surgeons' desire for knowledge.  Therefore, a market in dead bodies grew, and "resurrection men" would dig up freshly buried bodies and sell them to surgeons, who did not ask questions.  Like his brother William, John Hunter took fees from students to supervise their dissections.  The dead bodies (legal and illegal) were delivered to Hunter's home in the dark. 

Titled, "The Anatomist Overtaken by the Watch ...
Carry'ng Off Miss W-- in a Hamper"
The nightwatchman on left catches bodysnatcher
in middle, while William Hunter runs away with
a skull under his arm; 1773
(Wellcome Library)

In order to combat the stigma against surgeons and dissection, John Hunter gave lectures to the wealthy intelligentsia at grand occasions with lavish food.  Every Saturday in May and October he opened his museum of dissected human and animal specimens to the public for tours.

As time went along, the friends and families of private patients asked to have postmortems done, and so did the courts when a suspicious death occurred.  Newspapers and magazines published reports of dissections of famous people, and Gentleman's Magazine published a drawing of King George II's heart from his postmortem in 1762.  In the Hunterian Museum today, there are still several organs that are displayed and labelled with famous patients' names.
Hunter spent thousands of pounds to obtain valuable specimens, and when he died suddenly, his family had no other assets.  The government purchased his collection in 1799 and donated it to the Royal College of Surgeons for preservation (Displays, Hunterian Museum, London; viewed 18 October 2012). 

Byrne with 3 normal sized men
and a dwarf
(Wellcome Library)

It can be argued that Hunter's greatest specimen was not the 144 ounce tumor he removed from a man's neck in a 25 minute surgery (which you can see at the Hunterian Museum), but the skeleton of Charles Byrne, "The Irish Giant."

Byrne arrived in London in 1782, and was allegedly over 8 feet tall.  Hunter got so excited about possessing Byrne's skeleton that he offered Byrne money to prepurchase his remains.  This terrified Byrne and he made arrangements to be buried at sea in a lead coffin.  However, as he was dying in 1783, Hunter bribed his "corpse watcher" with a reported 500 pounds (Porter, Bodies, 56).  That amount of money equivalent to $64,000 (U.S.) today (http://www.futureboy.us/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=500&currency=pounds&fromYear=1783, accessed 19 November 2012).  Byrne's 7'7" skeleton is still displayed at the Museum, even though there have been recent ethical arguments for his original wishes to be respected and to bury him at sea. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/22/irish-giant-skeleton-museum-display, with better photo of skeleton,accessed 20 November 2012.)



Charles Byrne's skeleton in far back, surrounded by bottles
and bottles of human and animal specimens
Hunterian Museum gallery at Royal College of Surgeons, London
photography not usually allowed
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Byrne_(giant))
Gallery seen 18 October 2012, photo accessed 19 November 2012.

Back to "resurrection men" ... the demand for bodies became so lucrative that in Edinburgh in 1827-28, two men named Burke and Hare murdered 17 people to sell their bodies to a private anatomy lecturer.

John Hunter, part 2

John Hunter
(note skeleton in background)
(Wellcome Library)

Before his establishment as a sought-after teacher and healer, John Hunter studied under his older brother William and then the famous surgeon William Cheselden.  John then became a military surgeon, which later led to his "Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-shot Wounds."  He would also write papers on human teeth, venereal disease, and "Certain Parts of the Animal Oeconomy" (Porter, Bodies, 175-76).  Once he became well-known, the elite mentioned him in their letters, reporting his treatments of both medications and surgery, and even that he recommended "a little excess now and then is good for the constitution, it puts the Stomach on a salutary exertion" (Lane, 211, 220, 239).

Left leg amputation.  The knob on top of the knee keeps the tourniquet tight,
while the surgeon reaches around under the leg to make a circular cut.
Note the standing room only gallery,
including Omaih, a Polynesian gentleman visiting from Tahiti in 1774-1776.
  (Source: Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret)

Surgery was only done as a last resort when it was a matter of either life or death, or relief of excruciating pain. Neither anaesthesia or antisepsis was yet known. Patients were awake (alcohol intake caused more bleeding), and held down by students or assistants (Mathias, Julie. "The Old Operating Theatre," Lecture at Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret, London, 15 October 2012). So the best surgeon was a quick and accurate one, who knew what he was doing because he had practiced.
For some sense of what an operating theatre in the 18th and early 19th century was like, watch http://medicallondon.org/walk_1.html, "Mark Pilkington reveals the history of the Old Operating Theatre."  For some sort of sense as to what an amputation was like, view http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk4XOrbH9g or you can connect to it by clicking "Museum Video: Medicine at the Movies" at www.thegarret.org.uk. 



Wonderful drawing of dissection of torpedo fish
by John Hunter
(Wellcome Library)

James Paget, a Victorian surgeon, would later write about John Hunter, "Before his time [surgeons] held inferior rank in the profession ... they were subject to the physicians, and very justly so, for the physicians were not only better learned in their own proper calling, but men of higher culture, educated gentlemen and the associates of gentlemen.  From Hunter's time a marked change may be seen.  Physicians worthily maintained their rank, as they do now, and surgeons rose to it ... Yes, more than any man that ever lived, Hunter helped to make us gentlemen[.]" (Porter, Bodies, 176.)

John Hunter, the surgeon and anatomist, part 1

I know the very few of you who are going to get excited about this picture are the medical history geeks (count me in).  But let me explain to the rest of you what the excitement about these drawings is all about.  I'll need to give you a little history first.

Two forms of aneurysm
(weakening in the wall of a blood vessel,
making it bulge)
Drawn by John Hunter
(Source: Wellcome Library) 

It was considered shameful for a body to be dissected after death.  This shame was reinforced by the Murder Act of 1752, which directed that the body of any executed murderer not be buried but be either publicly dissected or hung in chains.  There were no restrictions by age, sex, gender or occupation, and so people went to see dissections as a form of entertainment.  This was considered to be a deterrent to crime, and the Barber-Surgeons' Company received the bodies and kept strict control over them (Display, Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, viewed 18 October 2012).
(In 1745, the barbers and the surgeons were separated into distinct guilds by George II, who then established the Royal College of Surgeons.  The barbers were thus more restricted in what they were able to do, but today they retain the memory of their affiliation with surgeons via the red and white striped barber's pole, which symbolized both professions' ability to let blood in the 18th century.) (http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/barbersurgeons.aspx, accessed 18 November 2012).


(Source: Wellcome Library)

Surgeons needed to know what was in the body in order to be able to identify physical changes in the body due to illness.  (Remember, physicians felt anatomy was beneath them because they diagnosed based on the premise of humour theory.)  Surgeons at this time did not go to university but were apprenticed with a more experienced surgeon, and in order to learn their profession needed to attend anatomy lectures (Hunterian Museum).


Cheselden giving
anatomy/dissection lesson,
circa 1730-40

The above etching, entitled "The Reward of Cruelty", shows the dissection of a man executed by hanging.  The artist portrays the surgeons as disrespectful to the body, including letting a dog gnaw at the man's innards, and boiling the flesh off skeletons.  Before 1745, only the instructor dissected while students (and public) watched, but in 1745 the well-known surgeon William Cheselden began advertising for students to participate so they could buy hands-on experience.



William Hunter's drawing
of pregnant uterus
(Source: Wellcome Library)

However, a pair of brothers made anatomy and dissection more acceptable and gave medical science incredible information.  William (1718-83) and John Hunter (1728-1793) excelled at dissection and anatomy.  William headed a private anatomy school in Piccadilly which taught students physiology, midwifery, pathology, and women's/children's diseases as well as surgery (Porter, Blood, 121).  In my opinion, William was the better artist in terms of educating students -- compare his drawing with that of John's above.

So the reason to get excited about this is because by dissecting bodies, and then educating by hands-on cutting and via drawings, knowledge about what was in the body (and therefore abnormalities) expanded.  In Italy, professor of anatomy Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771) proved that diseases of certain kinds showed up in certain organs, that certain anatomical abnormalities correlated with specific symptoms, and that organ changes were responsible for illness.  In 1799, the anatomist Marie Francois Xavier Bichat (1771-1802) taught, "You may take notes for twenty years from morning to night at the bedside of the sick, and all will be to you only a confusion of symptoms ... a train of incoherent phenomena."  But once bodies are opened "this obscurity will soon disappear." (Porter, Blood, 71-74.)

George Cheyne, the wholistic vegetarian

George Cheyne, MD
(Source: Wellcome Library)

George Cheyne, MD (1671-1743), was greatly admired by John Wesley.  Cheyne, as you can see here, was grossly obese and very unhealthy.  Like William Buchan he trained in Scotland, and upon his arrival in Bath did what all the physicians of the time were doing to recruit high-paying patients -- he ate and drank a LOT.  He became successful, but by 1705 had ballooned to being "excessively fat, short-breath'd, Lethargic and Listless."  He sobered up, yo-yo dieted for years, and then went on an all-milk diet, which make him "Lank, Fleet and Nimble".  However, he began to drink again, and by 1720 was drinking three bottles of wine a day and weighed a whopping 448 pounds!  The only thing that finally worked was giving up drinking and being a vegetarian (Arnold, Catherine.  Bedlam: London and Its Mad.  (London: Simon and Schuster UK Ltd, 2008), 116-17).  According to Wikipedia, he is best known for his promotion of vegetarianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cheyne_(physician).



(Source: Wellcome Library)

Wesley extensively used Cheyne's Essay of Health and Long Life (1724) and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases (1742) in Primitive Physick (Maddox, Deborah.  "Pastor and Physician: John Wesley's Cures for Consumption" in Madden, 'Inward and Outward Health', 102).  His Essay was published in 20 editions over 15 years, so was quite popular.  It addressed sleep, the passions, fresh air, evacuations, and a healthy grains and greens diet.  He himself was a great advertisement for its success after he lost all the weight (Porter, Bodies, 84). Wesley appreciated Cheyne's framework of the intertwined body, mind and soul (97), and the body as a "well-working" whole (Schwab, Linda.  'This Curious and Important Subject': John Wesley and the Desideratum" in Madden, 'Inward and Outward Health', 186). 
Cheyne not only addressed physical health, but also mental illness.  He described a form of mental illness which we would probably now label "Major Depressive Disorder, Severe with Psychotic Features," (Index of Psychiatric Disorders at http://allpsych.com/disorders/disorders_alpha.html, accessed 18 November 2012) and then we would list the religious symptoms or manifestations.  He called it "religious melancholy":

"There is a kind of melancholy, which is called religious, because 'tis conversant about matters of religion; although, often, the persons so distempered have little solid piety.  And this is merely a bodily disease, produced by an ill habit or constitution, wherein the nervous system is broken and disordered, and the juices are become viscid and glewy."  (Cheyne, George. An Essay of Health and Long Life, 1st ed (London, 1724, p. 57, in Madden, "Pastor and Physician", 97.)

Remember, he is basing his explanation on the construct of the humours being out of balance when one became ill.  He does accurately summarize, though, the psychotic (out-of-touch with reality) thought processes that some religiously preoccupied patients have, even though they may not be religious or pious at all in their normal state.  Nowadays we treat these patients with antipsychotics, because we agree it is not a moral or religious issue but a physical illness affected by biochemical changes.

Interestingly, Cheyne and Wesley knew of each other, since Cheyne's brother-in-law, John Middleton, was John and Charles Wesley's physician in Bristol (Barry, Jonathan. "Piety and the patient: Medicine and religion in eighteenth century Bristol" in Porter, Patients and Practitioners, 168).  So early Methodists got what Wesley thought was the best of Cheyne's advice when he incorporated a lot of Cheyne's advice into Primitive Physick.

Bills of Mortality and illness identification

Left, "The Good Man at the Hour of Death" -- Death is elderly with wings and hourglass.
Right, "The Bad Man at the Hour of Death" -- Death is skeleton with spear.
(Source:  Wellcome Museum special exhibition, "Death, A Self-Portrait," accessed 18 November 2012.)

Registration of deaths and disease classifications go hand-in-hand.  The recording of death causes began in Italy in the 15th century, and officially began in London in 1532.  Searchers determined the cause but would consult a physician in more difficult cases.  Although we think of them as poorly trained, they were identified as "wise women."  Their reports were given to the parish clerk weekly, who then totalled up the causes and published the results on Wednesdays (Moriyama, Iwao, Ruth Loy, Alastair Robb-Smith, MD.  History of the Statistical Classification of Diseases and Causes of Death (ed/updated Harry Rosenberg and Donna Hoyert).  (Washington, DC:  National Center for Health Statistics/CDC, 2011), 1-2).
John Graunt (1620-74) used the Bills to make generalizations about about mortality, including that a third of all children in London died before the age of five (Moriyama, 2).  The Bills were not used in the 18th century for doing anything more than tracking disease -- it would not be until 1854 that they would be used by John Snow to identify the source of a cholera outbreak and therefore change the environment (eliminate the water pump where the cholera-infected water was coming from).  For more information about his fascinating story, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow_(physician).
We now know that many of the categories in a Bill of Mortality could describe the same illness, or a symptom could be attributed to many illnesses.  So although the searchers did the best they could, it became obvious in the century after Methodism began that a classification of naming illnesses was crucial for good illness prevention and disease control.  In 1839, the first Annual Report of the Registrar-General of England and Wales stated, "The advantages of a uniform nomenclature, however imperfect, are so obvious, that is tis surprising no attention has been paid to its enforcement in the Bills of Mortality.  Each disease has, in many instances, been denoted by three or four terms, and each term has been applied to as many different diseases; vague, inconvenient names have been employed, or complicatons have been registered instead of primary diseases.  The nomenclature is of as much importance in this department of enquiry as weights and measures in the physical sciences, and should be settled without delay." (Moriyama, 5).
My point in telling you all this is to remind you that today we are told by our medical care providers exactly what we have, or a best educated guess as to what we are ill with.  There was no such system in the time of the early Methodists.  So if nobody knew what was wrong with you, there was no organized system to figure out what people actually were sick with, how would anyone know what was an effective treatment for your illness?  You can understand how Methodists would be grateful for a book of treatments from John Wesley, whom they trusted and respected.